State Danceline: Trip No. 17 ends with a state title in Jazz and a third place finish in High Kick

The Yellow Medicine East Silhouettes are the 2013 State Class A Jazz champions in danceline.

“It feels amazing,” said senior dancer Mariah Weir when asked what it feels like to be a state champion. “It’s something you dream about and to have it come true like it did is just... amazing.”

Comment

By Eric J. MonsonSports Editor

Granite Falls Advocate Tribune

By Eric J. MonsonSports Editor

Posted Feb. 21, 2013 at 3:33 PM
Updated Feb 21, 2013 at 3:53 PM

By Eric J. MonsonSports Editor

Posted Feb. 21, 2013 at 3:33 PM
Updated Feb 21, 2013 at 3:53 PM

The Yellow Medicine East Silhouettes are the 2013 State Class A Jazz champions in danceline.

“It feels amazing,” said senior dancer Mariah Weir when asked what it feels like to be a state champion. “It’s something you dream about and to have it come true like it did is just... amazing.”

The Silhouettes strolled into State for the seventeenth straight time after winning the Section 3A Championships in both Jazz and High Kick. That fact was made even more impressive at State as Section 3A proved itself to be the best and most competitive section in the state with every team from the Section making the finals, except Tracy-Milroy-Balaton who would miss that honor by losing a tie-breaker.

On Friday, during the Jazz competition, the Silhouettes cleared prelims with their darkly dynamic dance to the song ‘Uninvited’ and breezed to finals with the highest score to come out of preliminaries.

“We had a decent lead coming out of prelims,” said Silhouette head coach Chris Nerdahl. “Actually, it was a really nice lead.”

Not that they expected it.

“I didn’t expect the score we got,” said Nerdahl. “After prelims you get a packet with your scores. I opened the packet with a bunch of the girls around me and kind of lost it when I saw our scores.

“You know there were mistakes. Fluke mistakes both times we danced that never had happened before, but even with those mistakes they were able to win.”

By the end of the season YME’s Jazz dance was scoring roughly 40 points higher than any local team—a landslide in dance. The competition at State could only manage to halve that landslide point total—bringing the spread down to roughly a 20 point victory, but still—a landslide.

The state title is the Silhouettes first since 2008, when the team won state in high kick and first Jazz title since 2003.

As for High Kick, the team’s Back N’ Sync tour of 90s boy band music earned them a third place finish.

“I’m still kind of speechless,” said Nerdahl trying to sum up this season. “I’m still trying to put this season in perspective. We went into this year thinking we’d push them as hard as we can this year to work for next year. And now to have them already achieve like they did, it’s exciting.”